


Trickster Gods

by Dendritic_Trees



Category: Dollhouse, Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Bisexual Character, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/F, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Friendship, Hugs, Loneliness, M/M, Multi, No Concrit Please, The author has too may feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-01-03 04:48:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 8,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1065945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dendritic_Trees/pseuds/Dendritic_Trees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Sanctuary Network never quite managed to get rid of all The Cabal operatives and now it seems that what is left of The Cabal might be responsible for the rumors about the notorious Dollhouse.</p><p>Topher needs help, Bennett needs company but the Sanctuary Network exists to give help to those who need it, and as it turns out, matchmaking may be a Vampiric trait, so maybe everything will work out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue, Sanctuary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is, I promise, a rational internal explanation for what I’ve done to the Sanctuary canon and I will even hope to eventually explain it, but for now, I’ll just summarise that all of The Five, Ashley and Biggie are still alive and everything is fine. Because this is supposed to be a happy story.

“I was just trying to help her.”

“I know, can you tell me what you did? How were you trying to help?”

“She, she was schizophrenic, I was going to fix her, but she wasn’t…”

“You’re talking about Priya?”

Topher nodded and curled up on himself a bit more.

“She wasn’t sick… I thought it was a delusion, but she really was being poisoned… she didn’t belong in the Dollhouse…”

“Is this her brain, here?” Another nod from Topher. “Well she’s obviously not schizophrenic, look at the ventricles, they’re totally normal. The chances of someone with severe schizophrenia presenting without enlarged ventricles has got to be astronomical, what were you thinking?”

“MAGNUS! That is enough, will you just LEAVE!” Helen pursed her lips, stood up and exited the room as Topher dissolved from whimpering to sobbing silently into Will’s shoulder.

“That, was not helpful. In fact that was the opposite of helpful,” Will snapped at Helen, outside the hotel room door.

“Well, what do you want me to do? What are the chances we find someone who can give us this information again? ”

“He is having an acute stress reaction, so as you can imagine, making him more stressed, is not exactly considered the gold standard for therapy.” Seeing that Magnus was rapidly becoming livid, Will backed off a little bit, “Look, he’s probably going to come around in a few days, and in the mean time, I’ll talk through this with him and I’ll probably get most of the information then, and there’s every chance we can get him on our side. The Cabal has no reason to think we’re here, and The Dollhouse probably doesn’t even know who we are. We have time. Let’s just pack up and head back to the Sanctuary.”

“And Dr. Brink is just going to come along with us?”

“I thought I’d give Ashley a call.”

Helen shrugged and grinned slightly as Helen-the-Doctor came to an agreement with Helen-the-Strategist. “Home we go then.”


	2. Prologue, Dollhouse

“Miss DeWitt?”

“Yes Ivy, no problems with Victor’s imprint I trust.”

“No Ma’am. It’s um… its just…” Ivy froze. She wasn’t used to talking to DeWitt at all, let alone delivering bad news. “I think Topher’s missing.”

“Missing, what do you mean missing?”

“Not here?”

“Please tell me, Ivy, that you have not come here just to tell me that Topher isn’t in the building, he does occasionally leave, you know.”

“No, it’s – it’s –“

“Yes?”

“Look, I know no one’s going to tell me what went on the other day, you know, with Sierra?” DeWitt’s mouth tightened noticeably to this. “And, I don’t even think I want to know. But afterward Topher looked really bad, and he’s barely been around. I mean, he’s been here, but he’s just holed up in the server room. And… I thought I… I thought I heard him crying. And then yesterday afternoon I couldn’t find him at all, and I phoned him, but he didn’t answer, and I went and knocked on his door last night, you know, in case he was sick, and he didn’t answer, and now he’s still not here, and I still can’t get a hold of him, and he didn’t say anything, and, you know, normally I have a hard time getting him to let me to do a single imprint on my own, so it just seems wrong.” The words all came out in a rush while Ivy stared at DeWitt as if she expected her to pounce. “And I’m worried.” She added, a little lamely.

“Well, I will look into it. That will be all.” Adelle said, as coldly as she could manage. She headed for the scotch the second that Ivy was out the door. _Topher had been crying? Since when did he get upset about things? And since when did she not notice her employees hiding and crying in the server room. What happened?_


	3. Topher, Old City Sanctuary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We never find out where Old City is in Sanctuary, but they're supposed to be close to Vancouver and its an American city, so I'm assuming its on the coast near the Canadian border.

Three days later, Topher woke up feeling fragile, headache-y and sad, but more or less alert and like himself. And in a room which was most definitely not his, with no clear memory of what had happened for the past who-knew-how-long.

“Okay…”

The room, well appointed as it was, wasn’t offering any clues, but did contain a pile of clean clothes (his), an attached bathroom, and something that looked like breakfast (it was).

Cleaned up, dressed and fed Topher found that he wasn’t quite as amnesiac as he’d first thought. He could actually remember most of the last three days (or was it four?), it was blurry and out of order, but it was there. The overall picture wasn’t promising in regards to his sanity, or his continued existence, once DeWitt found out he’d blathered all the Dollhouse’s secrets to the nearest available; shrink? Psychiatrist? Stranger in a park? Crap.

A real search of the room revealed no more clues, except a pile of journal articles, the top one was entitled “Replicating Milgram”. It took a few more seconds for the significance to click ( _“It wasn’t a good thing, but it doesn’t make you evil, it just makes you normal”_ ). The memory was not particularly encouraging and involved yet more crying, which would, at least, explain his headache.

Eventually, he worked up the courage to try the door. Anticlimactically, it was unlocked and opened onto a long corridor of similar doors. Walking along the corridor made him feel like he had accidentally fallen asleep on the set of a British period drama right until the point that a man in combat boots and a bullet-proof vest careened around a corner and nearly decked him accidentally.

“Sorry mate!” The man yelled, in a distinctly British voice as he ran past.

Before Topher could attempt to work out the significance of this, he was nearly collided with by two more people. The man and woman from the park, also both in combat gear. “Ah, you’re up. Feeling better?” Asked the woman, brightly. She was grinning cheerfully, which was somewhat at odds with Topher’s memories of her.

“Um, yes?” He replied.

“Lovely. We’ll have to talk later, there’s a giant salamander on the loose, so I’ve got to run.” And run she did.

“A giant salamander…” Topher repeated to her fast retreating back. “Oh crap, I’ve completely lost my mind. I’m hallucinating and none of this is real!” He squeezed his eyes shut and ran his hands over the walls, waiting for the wood panelling to give way to tacky, institutional paint, but it didn’t, and after a very long moment, he opened them again. The thud of combat boots had faded and the grand, old-fashioned hallway was silent again, and unchanged.

At a loss for anything else to do Topher continued down the hall, still periodically touching the walls, or one of the vases on small tables which punctuated them, still half expecting his hand to go through them. They all remained solid. Used to the structure of the underground Dollhouse he found an elevator and hit one of the buttons on autopilot. The elevator looked frankly alarming, all brass and bolts, so Topher’s joy at getting out of it somewhat outweighed his disappointment that he’d ended up in a hallway rather like the one he’d left. Faced with a choice between wandering aimlessly and getting back into the elevator to wander aimlessly on a different floor Topher decided to stay out of the elevator. It didn’t look up to code. Actually, it looked like it predated code. Trying to think of something constructive to do, however ended in him spinning in circles, literally, while trying to think of something. The spinning did at least, lead him to a window, which showed him he was still at least one floor off the ground (frustratingly, he didn’t think to count the number of buttons on the elevator). It also showed him an old-fashioned grounds and gate, which matched the old-fashioned hallways. In the distance, he could see docks and water, but he couldn’t tell if it was an ocean, or just a river.

His aimless wandering was interrupted by a loud crash from about two doors down. Torn between wanting to help, wanting some help, and not wanting to get into trouble he made something of a production of opening the door. At first the lab looked empty. Its occupant turned out to be ducked under table at the back. She made two more journeys between the floor and the lab bench, before she looked up and finally noticed Topher, who was lurking awkwardly in the doorway.

“Oh, um, hello.” She looked vaguely shocked “I didn’t see you, I mean, obviously, I didn’t or I would have said something. Were you there long?”

“No, not very long…” Topher could possibly have been less articulate, but as he was both confused and distracted by the very, very pretty girl with her arm in a sling, it would have been difficult “I was walking around… wherever this is, and there was a crash… and do you need any help?”

“Oh, no, I just knocked over some files, and nothing broke so its fine. Are you alright Magnus said you weren’t well do you want to come in I’m Bennett.” Bennett stammered out in one long exhaled breath. She was about as distracted by Topher as Topher was by her.

Topher didn’t notice that, he was too relieved that Magnus (he was fairly sure that was the woman who had talked about the salamanders) hadn’t actually told everyone that he had gone completely nuts. “I, um, sure.” He sidled into the lab and perched on a stool. “I’m, uh, fine now, I think, I’m Topher. I mean, I think I’m fine, I know I’m Topher, because I’m, not crazy. Did you say Bennett?”

“Yes, um, Bennett Halverson. It’s Topher Brink, right?”

“I, um, yeah, did you say Halverson?” “Ben-nett Hal-ver-son.” She repeated slowly, looking worriedly at him. Topher wasn’t actually having trouble with the name, he was just inarticulate. “You mean you’re Bennett Halverson? As in, the Bennett Halverson, you reconstructed that broken data wedge and merged JAMs with ESAMs to create next gen proteins and you were all amazing and then you vanished. Like POOF!” He had bounced off of the stool and onto the balls of his feet, grinning and bubbling with enthusiasm and admiration.

Bennett was shy to start with, and still recovering from her last experience of being paid attention to on top of that so she folded up somewhat under the onslaught of Topher’s sheer genuineness. “Well, I didn’t really go poof, I mean, I just came here. Although, I guess it was a bit sudden and I didn’t really tell anyone, I mean, you can’t really do that with the Dollhouse, so I guess I did go poof, a little bit…”

“So this would be - not the Dollhouse then?” Its not that he had thought it was, but it didn’t hurt to check. “No. This is the Sanctuary.” What the hell was ‘The Sanctuary’? “And, um, where is this exactly?” Oh god, that was embarrassing, could he please vanish now?

“Oh,” Bennett squeaked, her good hand coming up over her mouth. “I’m sorry, this one’s Old City.”

“Huh.” What else was there to say, he’d panicked, just about blacked out and ended up nearly in Canada. At least it wasn’t Mexico.

“Did you really like my report?”

“Yeah, that was great!”

“Well, I guess, I mean, it isn’t really like what you did with the parallel imprinting method.”

“No, it was amazing! That was good though, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

Topher and Bennett could have probably continued their expressions of awkward mutual admiration for some time, but they were fortunately rescued in short order by another visitor to the lab. It was the man who had nearly run into Topher earlier, who Bennett apparently knew, “Declan. Did you find it? Did everything go alright?”

“Just grand. Would have been easier with Ashley, and even easier with Nikola, but we managed. You can go see if you like, they’re still in the entrance getting everything untangled.”

“Never a vampire around when you need one?” Bennett quipped.

“Nope. How are things here?”

“Nice and quiet without Nikola to make things blow up.”

“Well, at least there’s a bright side to the lack of vampires then.” At that point Declan seemed to realise how impenetrable the conversation had become and turned to Topher. “Hello, Declan McCrae, we weren’t ever introduced”, Declan spun slightly and offered Topher his outstretched hand, as though he wasn’t standing around in full combat gear talking about vampires.

“Topher Brink?” Topher tried, but couldn’t keep the rising inflection out of his voice, like his name was somehow in question.

“Nice to meet you. You should head down too; Magnus will want to see you.” Declan said.

Magnus might have wanted to see Topher, but Topher wasn’t especially keen to see them (he still wasn’t entirely clear on who exactly Magnus was). When Bennett grabbed his hand and started pulling him towards the entrance hall, the fact that Bennett was holding his hand couldn’t quite distract him from the feeling of walking to the gallows which had formed in the pit of his stomach.

There really was a giant salamander. It was lying on the floor of the cavernous entrance hall partially wrapped in a net. It was probably a bad sign that Topher found the reality of amphibians the length of small cars reassuring. Bennett immediately squeaked with delight and hurried over to examine the massive thing, Topher hung back, hoping to fade into the shadows around the stairwell. It didn’t work.

“Ah, Topher, lovely, I was just going to come looking for you. Give me fifteen minutes to get changed and I’ll meet you in my office.” Said the tall woman who Topher presumed was Magnus. She was still smiling brightly, like she enjoyed capturing large salamanders, as she followed up with directions.


	4. Helen, Old City Sanctuary

When Helen returned, changed into business clothes and with damp, newly-washed hair, Topher was still standing in the doorway to her office. “Won’t you sit down?” she prompted and steered him into the visitors chair in front of her desk with an outstretched arm and a hand on his shoulder. “Doctor Helen Magnus,” she said extending her hand, once she was facing him from across her desk. Will was of the opinion that he would probably remember, but she felt it was best to start fresh, now Topher was fully present.

“Topher Brink.” Topher returned her handshake very tentatively and didn’t stand when she did, which left him peering up at her through his fringe. As soon as she let go of his hand, he pulled it back into his lap.

“Doctor Topher Brink if I’m not mistaken.” When he nodded, but didn’t say anything, she followed up with “For Heaven’s sake, am I really that intimidating.” And then, “Here, have some tea.”

Topher took the cup of tea and clung to it like it was holding him afloat. Helen kept talking. “You know, this isn’t actually the first time I’ve heard of you. A colleague of mine forwarded this to me a few years ago.” She slid the paper she was holding across the desk, _Non-topographic encoding of episodic memories in the neocortex_. “Your undergraduate honours thesis I believe. Its brilliant. Confused me tremendously when I tried to look you up, I was looking for someone established, and you didn’t even have a doctorate yet. I meant to keep an eye on you; see where you ended up, but I lost track of you. Obviously I regret that now.”

“What are you going to do to me?” Topher asked.

“Do to you? I’m not going to do anything to you.” Helen replied a little more shortly than intended. Her British Victorian upbringing was not reacting well with Topher’s open terror and guilt, but she couldn’t very well ask him to go and emote elsewhere. “You’ve got yourself into a real mess haven’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Despite the, ah, abduction, you aren’t our prisoner. You are free to go. Although I’d obviously appreciate you’re cooperation. And you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like.”

“They’ll kill me.” Mumbled Topher, with a sort of matter-of-fact resignation. “The Dollhouse. Rossum. If they find out I was here, or about Kinnard, or Priya, and maybe Saunders. So I can’t really… go.”

“Ah, well that’s not quite so insurmountable as you might think. We can hide people quite effectively when we want. And quite frankly, I’m not planning for the Dollhouse to be around to too much longer.” Helen reassured him, not pausing to wonder if that might not actually be a reassuring statement, while she sent a text message to Ashley.

“Why would you do that? Hide me, I mean. I’m part of the Dollhouse too. I’m as bad as they are.” “Hardly. You tried to help. Admittedly, not all that successfully, but we aren’t going to throw you to the wolves just for that.”

“I have no morals.” Was Topher’s response. It didn’t sound like a confession, more like a memorized fact, repeated word for word.

So that’s what Helen went with. “Who told you that?”

“Everybody knows that. Boyd, and Dominic, and Dr Saunders. Especially Dr Saunders. And Adelle. They all told me.”

“I don’t think that’s necessarily the best measure of morality.” Helen replied. She’d cringed a bit when Boyd had come up, but Ashley materialized by her desk before they could move onto more sensitive subjects.

Topher jumped up and yelped. Ashley darted across the desk and grabbed his tea cup before it could spill, which only made him stumble back further. “Wah. Where did you come from? You weren’t there a second ago?”

“Topher, this is my daughter Ashley. And no, she wasn’t here a second ago, she can teleport. As you might have noticed, there are a number of unusual things here at the Sanctuary. That’s what we do, here, we provide Sanctuary for anyone who needs it. I’ll see that someone gives you the tour later. In the mean time, Ashley, Topher needs to vanish. Small matter of an evil underground conspiracy. If you could sort that out.”

“Sure thing Mom.” Ashley replied.

Helen could see Topher’s brow furrowing as he tried to work out how she could have a daughter Ashley’s age. People had been doing that since Ashley was a teenager, and it never ceased to be funny. She could see Ashley was also grinning as she extended a hand to Topher, out of the corner of her eye. “Come on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like the balance that Helen strikes is that she’s pragmatic enough to take advantage of the fact that Topher’s ill and wandering around to pump him for information, but she’s also principled enough to make sure he’s okay.


	5. Topher, Old City Sanctuary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Genetech is the genetic name I made up for Dana Whitcomb's company, because there's no canonical name I've been able to find.
> 
> Also, Bioethics by Glannon is a real book, and its very good.

Ashley headed out of Helen’s office and Topher followed. They headed down the hall and into another, smaller office.

“So Dr Magnus is your Mom? How does that work?” Topher asked.  

“Oh, Mom is sort of immortal. It’s a super long story. I’ll tell you later.” Ashley replied, with a truly disconcerting degree of unconcern as she fished papers out of several filing cabinet drawers. She then spun and handed the papers to Topher, along with a phone and a laptop computer. “Here you go.”

The top page was titled “Digital Identity Removal” followed by a long checklist.  "Do you peole do this, like, every day?" Topher asked

“Not every day. But, you know, pretty frequently.” Ashley replied, fishing a pad of paper out of one pocket. “Can you write your address down here?”

Topher obediently scrawled his address onto the proffered scrap of paper. His brain seemed to be stuck in some sort of stuttering loop. Which Ashley must have noticed, because she reached over and patted his shoulder a bit. “Don’t worry. I’m going to go give this to Declan, and then I’m gonna be right back. So you get started.” Then she left.

Hiding from a scary mega-corporation turned out to be very much like having your credit card stolen. Lots of forms and boring phone calls with uncooperative people. On any other day Topher would have been utterly frustrated at having to do it, but if he was bickering with credit card company representatives, he didn’t have to think about teleporting women, or giant salamanders.

Ashley bobbed in and out as he worked and asked questions or gave instructions, usually she walked in through the door, periodically with tea, which seemed to be omnipresent or food he was too distracted to eat. She kept absently patting his shoulder which was more comforting than it should have been. People didn’t touch him very often. Adelle had, but whenever Topher remembered her resting her hand on his face and telling him he had no morals, he felt ill. It didn’t take all that long, really. Moving a bank account, as it turned out, was tricky and irritating but cancelling credit cards and closing online accounts wasn’t, and within a few hours he was done, and left with only a pile of completed paperwork and a now finished checklist, which he handed to Ashley when she next came in.

“Hey, great. We’re all done too. You have officially disappeared.” Ashley responded, with a bright grin, like she was congratulating him on some sort of accomplishment. “Hey, there’s nothing about a passport here.”

“No, I don’t have one.”

“Right, you should get one.” Ashley replied, and handing him another set of forms.

“Do you think I’m going to need one?” Were they planning to ship him out of the country?

“Well, not right now, but it’s good to have, and, I mean, you’re already here.” Ashley said, fiddling with the water bottle she was carrying. “I’ll wait here, Mom wants to see you when you’re done.” Suddenly, the prospect of applying for a passport seemed much more appealing.

Ashley draped herself across a spare chair, and waited while Topher filled out forms, periodically slurping from her water bottle, which was filled with something reddish and slightly viscous. “That’s not water is it?” Topher asked

“No, that’s –“ Ashley gave him a pensive sort of look, then nodded. “No, that’s blood.”

“You’re drinking blood? That’s um, that’s uh, are you a vampire?” Really, what was he supposed to say to that?

Ashley took one look at his face and cracked up. “Just a bit. Its also a super long story. Don’t worry, I won’t eat you?”

Put like that it just sounded rude. “No, I didn’t think you would. Sorry.”

“Aw, its okay. I mean, vampire right. You done?” Ashley reassured him.

Actually Topher was more or less finished, but he wasn’t looking forward to facing Magnus again. “I, no, maybe, I haven’t done this before.”

Ashley, unfortunately, had done this before, took one look at the form he was still staring at, declared “Yep, you’re done” and marched him back to Magnus’s office.

 

Magnus’s office was very large and very Victorian and Topher found it very intimidating, like the ornate furniture and looming bookcases were judging him. Magnus was still behind her desk, but Will was now perched on the edge of it and another man, thin and dark haired, was sitting in a chair in one corner, resting his chin on interlaced fingers. As soon as Topher entered the stranger fixed him with a heavy, penetrating stare.

Magnus looked up. “Topher. Do please come in. Sit down.” She waved at the chair in front of her desk where he'd been sitting before.  

Topher placed himself back in the chair and Magnus handed him yet another cup of her apparently never-ending supply of tea. “I guess you want me to tell you about the Dollhouse now, right?” Topher asked.

“We’re rather more interested in finding out how much about the Dollhouse you actually know.” Helen replied. Which didn’t make any sense. But Topher figured he was already screwed anyway, so he started talking. He began with the details of the LA Dollhouse, and when he moved on to the technical details of the imprinting process Helen raised a hand to stop him and directed him back to the people who worked there. There wasn’t, ultimately, much to say. Since he didn’t know any of them outside of work he just ended up with a list of everyone and what they did, he started with Adelle, Boyd, Ivy, and Paul, stumbled a bit over Claire, added Mr Dominic after a moment. After a bit more prompting from Helen he added Harding and Ambrose, and the few sketchy details he had about the rest of Rossum’s organization.

Helen stopped him again when he ran out of those, and started moving on to the Dolls. "I think we can discuss that later.  It's Rossum we need to talk about now.

“I don’t really know much more about it. I’m really just the programmer, Ade- Dewitt did that stuff.” Topher replied.  

When he said that Magnus’s face softened into a sort of sympathetic frown, “Its rather worse than that, I’m afraid. Why don’t you come over here.” They all relocated, and rearranged themselves in the cluster of couches across from Magnus’s desk. It should have seemed friendly, sitting around the coffee table instead of across a desk, but Topher was feeling worse by the second. Something about the look on Magnus’s face when she suggested it was horribly ominous; less like something bad was about to happen, and more like something bad has already happened and he was just about to find out about it. Now that he was facing towards the door he could see Ashley leaning on the door frame. The dark haired man he hadn’t been introduced to was still staring at him like an X-ray.

 

It was worse than that. It was much worse. Magnus didn’t seem overly upset as she told him about The Cabal and the Lazarus virus, which Topher found a bit inexplicable, because he was very upset. They explained about GeneTech and Dana Whitcomb and the Source Blood and why precisely it was that Ashley was about two thirds a vampire. At that point, Topher felt like his brain got stuck, he couldn’t think about all that. It was too big, and too horrible. He couldn’t think about it because it was a Rossum company doing all those bad things and it was far too close to him for something that bad and his brain just wouldn’t seem to go there. Magnus was very open and straightforward about exactly what they’d done to the Cabal and most of GeneTech’s staff. It isn’t nearly as frightening to hear that the last time The Sanctuary had a run in with a Rossum company, it had ended in a massacre, as Topher would have imagined, or possibly he had run out of upset, and this was just a ceiling effect.

Except that they knew who the Cabal members they had missed the first time around were (they knew some of them, Will stressed that several times) and then it was much worse and apparently he could get more upset after all.

He didn’t feel short of breath, but he couldn’t seem to pull enough air into his lungs to say any more than “No…” over and over again. No, it couldn’t be Boyd. No, they must have made a mistake. No, he couldn’t handle any more bad news right now. No, Boyd was The Good Guy. “No… no… no.”

“Do stop whimpering, there’s a good lad.” The man he still hadn’t been introduced to pressed a glass full of some sort of liquor into his hands. It burned his throat, but it helped him catch his breath. “How can this be happening?”

Magnus just replied with “I’m so sorry.” Like someone had died.

“But what… what do I do? What do I do now? What do I do?”

“You have to not let it happen again. Ah-“ Magnus held up her hand to cut him off before he could beg for better advice. “Which means you have to decide if you are doing the right thing, before it blows up in your face.”

“Grow up, in other words.” The strange man cut in.

“Doctor Watson” Will yelled, cutting the stranger off.

“But what do I do?” Topher repeated, because for God’s sake, if he knew how to do that he wouldn’t be in this mess.

Helen seemed to take pity on him after that. “This is a field of study, you can learn this.” She handed him a book, _Bioethics_. Glannon. Okay, he could do that, he knew how to do a lit search. “There are more of those in the library.” Topher more-or-less fled from the room.


	6. Ashley, Old City Sanctuary

Ashley slipped out the door after Topher, meaning to follow him, and found him standing about two steps away down the hall, reeling from some combination of shock, and brandy on an empty stomach, seemingly stymied by not knowing how to get to the library. "Hey there, are you okay?" She asked.

Topher cringed like she’d hit him and backed up a bit. “Sorry.”

Since the apology made no immediate sense she asked, “Why are you sorry, we’re the ones who’ve been yelling at you all evening.”

He didn’t say anything, just gave her a look of total defeat.

She stepped over and hugged him, forcing him to stand with his arms pinned at his sides and his head against her shoulder. He didn’t pull away, but he stayed very still and tense and she could hear him trying not to cry. Maybe just because everything was awful, maybe because he expected her to blame him for it. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault. Everything’s going to be fine. We’re going to sort it out. It’s okay. I forgive you.” That was apparently what he needed to hear, because he suddenly relaxed to the point she was holding him up. She hung on until he stopped gasping, then set him back on his feet. “Are you alright?” She tried again, because while he obviously wasn’t, but it was still the thing you asked.

“I need to go to the library.” He replied mournfully.

“You sure you don’t want to do that in the morning?” When Topher shook his head, she briefly considered just picking him up and making him go upstairs and lie down, but he was still looking at her a bit like he expected her to bite, and she didn’t want to scare him. “Alright, library’s this way.”

Topher followed her docilely enough, and she left him curled up reading, or, at least, staring at the pages of a book, and headed back to Helen’s office. “So, he seems screwed up.” She summed up when she got back to where Will, Helen and Dr Watson were still talking.

“Yes, well, that much was apparent, where is he now, if I may ask?” Asked Dr Watson.

“Cowering in the library. I think you scared him. You could probably have skipped the whole ‘and then we killed them all’ bit, you know.” Replied Ashley.

“A bit of cowering might be considered the appropriate response, given his situation. Whether he knows it or not, he’s just signed up to be a chess piece – at the very least.”

“Aw, Doc, that’s mean. Leave him alone.” said Ashley

“You’re certainly taking an interest, Ashley. Any reason?” Helen asked.

“I dunno, he just seemed really sad. It was like, ‘Oh God I’m working for supervillains.’ You didn’t see him out there, I swear he thought I was going to hit him. Also, I think Rossum, like, specifically recruits scientists who have no friends. He didn’t have anyone who needed to know where he was. I asked twice.”

“Yeah, that’s what I got too, he’s totally isolated.” Will interjected. “And that fits with what we know about the Dollhouse. If you don’t have anyone to talk to, you can’t give anything away.”

“Well, it still sucks.” Said Ashley.

“He seemed genuinely interested in cooperating though. If he’s willing to help, he’ll be a tremendous asset, but I think it’s best if we not push him just now. What’s your take James?” Asked Helen.

James paused, either picking over his own deductions, or considering his phrasing. “He obviously has nothing to do with the Cabal directly, that was genuine shock. He certainly seemed to be thoroughly lacking in malice, and really, he’s done nothing that we haven’t had to stop Nikola doing at one point or another.” Helen grinned, Will sighed, James ignored them and kept talking. “The Dollhouse runs on Topher Brink’s brain, but he’s convinced he has no control over what happens in it. Whatever he might say, he’s looking for someone to follow. So I agree Helen. Keep him here, let him follow you for a while.”


	7. Adelle, Los Angeles Dollhouse

By the fourth day with no sign of Topher, Adelle was forced to admit that Ivy had been right and he was, in fact, missing, and so, with greatest of reluctance, she called Boyd and Paul into her office. “Mr Langton and Mr Ballard. Kindly track down Topher for me, he seems to need to be reminded that working here involves actually working, here.” It was a terrible bluff because all three of them knew that she wouldn’t be calling the head of security and an ex-FBI agent in to simply round up a recalcitrant employee and she most certainly would not be letting Paul Ballard of all people know she had misplaced her head programmer if she had any other options, but they wisely kept quiet about it and did as they were told. Small mercies.

The reprieve lasted for the full four hours it took for Paul to swagger back into her office with that very specific smirk that meant nothing good for her. “What the hell did you do?” He asked gleefully.

“I beg your pardon?” Replied Adelle.

“Topher’s rabbited. He’s completely gone. Phone’s disconnected, email accounts are closed, his apartment’s totally stripped, I talked to the supervisor and the neighbours and they didn’t hear a thing. He’s wiped himself off the face of the Earth. So I’m wondering what you did, that was so bad that even Topher Brink couldn’t take it?” Paul crowed.

And then Boyd walked in, of course. Although he, at least, had the good grace to look vaguely apologetic.

“Mr Langdon, I take it you’ve had no more success than ex-Agent Ballard here.” The ex-agent jab was petty, but it was the best she had under the circumstances.

“Afraid not, Ma’am. Bank accounts and credit cards were all shut down yesterday, there’s no activity for three days before that, and his car is still here.” Said Boyd.

Ballard picked that information up and ran with it while Adelle was still processing. He wasn’t quite as stupid as he seemed. “So who’d he go to for help? I mean, to vanish that thoroughly, in that sort of time frame, with that little money involved. However smart he may be, I just can’t see Topher pulling that off, someone has to have helped him. Does he have family in the city? Friends? Anyone?”

“Quite frankly, I don’t think Topher has friends or family at all.” Boyd told him, he was still smiling when he said it, as though he found it slightly funny, which struck Adelle as uncharacteristically cruel.

“So who’d he go to? And where?” Paul continued, “I mean, I can think of half a dozen people who could pull something like that off, but I just don’t think Topher could find any of them.” He paused, “Which means its more likely that someone found him. Which raises my next question; who did you piss off? And by that I of course mean, who did you piss of recently, who would be able to find Topher, because I realize that it’s probably a very long list.”

Adelle held on to her composure by her fingernails and managed to smile, “Mr Ballard I’m sure I have no idea what you mean. What we do here brings joy to many people. I assure you that your long lists of angry people are entirely imaginary.”

Boyd slipped out of the room to answer a phone call about half way through her little speech and then bobbed back in barely a minute later with more bad news. “Well, there’s no one with Topher’s name or description in any of the hospitals I called. Or the morgue.”

Maybe that was good news. It didn’t matter anyway, no leads was no leads. “Very well. Keep looking and keep me informed. You’re dismissed.” Adelle sighed, and set herself to figuring out how to prevent Matthew Harding from finding out she had misplaced her head programmer.


	8. Kate, Old City Sanctuary

Magnus had called Kate as soon as they had found (read abducted) Topher, but when running an underground city, especially when that city is still about one-third refugee camp and half construction site, and especially when half the inhabitants aren’t on speaking terms with the other half, it can take a while to get organized, so it took her a week to actually get to the Sanctuary for Magnus to fill her in.

“So you tracked down the Dollhouse, huh. Thought that was a myth.” She opened as she swanned in to Helen’s office.

“Apparently not. Its being run by a company called Rossum Pharmaceuticals, ever hear about them?” Asked Helen, she had that look that meant it was a leading question, but Kate bit.

“I think everyone’s heard of it, those ads, like, never leave the TV.” Kate said.

“Well, they’re a front for a Cabal splinter cell.” Replied Magnus, “I was hoping you might have some insight for me.”

Kate frowned, and chewed on her lower lip for a moment. “I was a freelancer Magnus, I really don’t have all that much to give you. I mean, I mostly ran red list abnormals for them. I never heard about the Dollhouse, and I only kidnapped people that one time. I swear.”

Helen grinned a little apologetically; the circumstances of Kate joining the Sanctuary wasn’t something they discussed very much, because neither of them enjoyed it, but Kate grinned gamely back and told Magnus what she could remember about how the Cabal had worked. It wasn’t much, she’d been a glorified and highly illegal errand girl. Still, Magnus seemed pleased with what she heard. They chatted a bit about it, batting ideas back and forth which eventually rolled around to their current best source of information, who was still hiding in the library.

“So, he had no idea at all.” Kate asked.

“No, the Cabal seems to be keeping themselves in the background this time around.” Magnus replied. “No idea why.”

“Yeesh, that’s got to suck.”

“Yes, rather, although he seems to be coping alright now. Would you mind going and having a word with him though, and maybe see if you can get him to stop hiding in my library.” Asked Helen.

“Sure thing boss.” Called Kate, as she headed out the door.

 

Kate’s first impression of Topher was that he wasn’t coping at all. He was curled up in a chair hiding behind a pile of books and a laptop computer, looking a bit frantic. Of course, Magnus also routinely went on research binges, and seemingly had no idea how it looked to non-mad scientists, so Kate supposed this might look like coping to her. She walked up and lent across the desk. “Hey.” She called, to get his attention.

He looked annoyed when he met her eyes, just like Magnus when she was hip deep in old books. But he wasn’t Magnus and she wanted to talk, so she started rifling through the piles of books, reading the titles off the spines, “Ethics, ethics, ethics. I think I’m starting to see a pattern here. So, how many of these you planning to read? I’m Kate, by the way.” 

“Could you stop that, I’m trying to work!” Topher said.

“You think it’ll help?”

“Dr Magnus said I should.” He looked down again, focusing back on what he was reading, or pretending to.

“Yeah, she mentioned that.  So, this is the plan, read all the ethics books in the library, hope something sticks.” 

He tried to give her another annoyed look, he really did, but it was mostly a hopeless look instead. 

“She also said you didn’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Topher mumbled, he’d stopped meeting her eyes.

“I knew.  About the Cabal.  Did jobs for them for years.”

That got his attention.  He looked back up, “But, why did you work with them then?”

“Because they were offering me a job I was good at.  Because I didn’t have a whole lot of other options.  Because I kind of didn’t care.  Anyway, then they started messing with the Sanctuary Network, and Magnus showed up, and the rest is kind of – a really long, weird story.”

Topher gave her with another lost, puppy-dog look. 

“Oh, come on.  You can’t hide in here forever.  You did the wrong thing, now you get to do something else, and this, is not doing something, this is doing nothing.” Kate said.

“Does that make it better?  Does it go away?” Topher asked.

“It doesn’t work like that.” Kate replied.  She dumped the pile of books on the floor and sat down on the desk.  “It’s more like, I dunno, all the crap you do just piles up.  Eventually you get a pile you can live with.  Come on, come have dinner.”  She abandonded all attempts to be philosophical, reached over and grabbed Topher’s arm, hauling him upright.  “We’re, like, miraculously all here for once, it’ll be like Thanksgiving.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hooray Kate! I really love Kate and Magnus’s relationship, and I’ve written Kate using ‘boss’ as sort of a term of endearment, even though Kate basically runs Praxis rather than working for the Sanctuary now. She’s also both very similar and very different to Magnus. They’re both very tough and strong and smart and have a lot of leadership capacity and Magnus definitely has enough of a history that she can relate to Kate’s, but there’s a huge race/class/education difference between them. 
> 
> I also think that Kate is sort of complexly paralleled/anti-paralleled with Topher. Because Kate really was, while working for the Cabal, lacking in options, she was poor, undereducated, underpriviledged, and actually doing what she could, and later in the series she sort of criticises herself and struggles with the idea that she might have been able to find a better option. Topher on the other hand, is never shown or implied to be underpriviledged in the way Kate was, and as a very well educated person doing a critical job he actually has a lot of power, but he is totally convinced throughout the series, that he is really powerless, so whether this is realistic or not I feel like Kate would be able to empathise with that sense of ‘I did the best I could with what I had’ more so than Magnus who has been saying ‘screw you, I’ll make it work’ since the 19th century.


	9. Topher, Old City Sanctuary

Topher did not tend to enjoy Thanksgiving, but he let Kate drag him anyway.  There were, no joke, fourteen people seated around a whole group of tables, all chattering happily, exactly like Thanksgiving. Ashley caught sight of them first and jumped up, “Kate, hey!  How’s Hollow Earth? Good to see you!”

While Kate and Ashley hugged there was a hurried shuffle of chairs to accommodate the new arrivals. Ashley and Kate chatted about music next to Topher while people handed him dishes of food.  There didn’t seem to be any particular rhyme or reason to the food being served, like an especially poorly organized potluck. Bennett was sitting nearly diagonally across from him, next to Dr Watson and a woman he didn’t recognize. She grinned a bit, and waved, but was too far away to easily talk.

It was as noisy and frenetic as Thanksgiving, but the conversation was better.  On one side of him Ashley and Kate had moved from music to defending fortifications, with interjections from Helen, and the man sitting next to him was valiantly attempting to discuss radio-tracers with Dr Watson (whose first name he’d never picked up), though they were too far apart, and it was obviously a lost cause.  Their conversation was eventually derailed by the woman sitting next to Will diverting Dr Watson into an argument about criminal profiling. Topher spent most of the meal sitting quietly, with his eyes flitting around the table as he listened in on different conversations.  He’d always thought that finding people who could keep up with him would make things easier, but a room full of brilliant people (probably unsurprisingly) hadn’t granted him the ability to enter a conversation with any degree of grace, or made him feel any less sad, or guilty, or overwhelmed.  So he just sat and let the conversation wash over him, it was surprisingly comforting.  There was much less of the usual isolated feeling that comes from being in a room full of conversations you aren’t having.  

Everyone’s conversations started to wind down as they finished eating and started to disperse. Topher just stayed at the table and tried to work up the nerve to not go back and hide in the library. He played back what Kate had said in his head _Now you get to do something else. Now you get to do something else._ With an imprinting chair he could turn it into something encouraging.  On his own it just sounded heavy.  The responsibility of having to make the right decision was pinning him to his seat.

Suddenly there was more weight in the form of Bigfoot’s hand descending onto his shoulder. “You alright?” He asked.

“Yeah,” said Topher. “I just need a minute.”

“Take several.” Advised the Big Guy, and thumped him upside the head on the way out.

The kitchen emptied all the way out leaving Topher alone, staring at his hands.  He hopped up and went on a brief, frantic search for coffee which turned up twelve kinds of pepper (labelled by country of origin), thirty kinds of tea, (which Topher counted because it was something he could do to not leave the kitchen) and zero kinds of coffee.  Still uncaffeinated, he folded himself back into his chair. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what he should do, it was just that what he should do was terrifying.

Topher did, in the end, leave the kitchen.  He passed the library, and went and hid in his room for a bit.  While Topher had been erasing himself from the internet Ashley had (somehow) emptied his apartment, which he supposed erased him from LA as well. This had apparently involved piling all his possessions into boxes entirely at random, and he still hadn’t found everything.  Of course, he also hadn’t opened most of them, so there was that.  He briefly considered just hiding either in bed or possibly under it, but that would only be postponing the problem and he didn’t even think it would make him feel any better.

In the end he walked to Magnus’s office as fast as he could, like ripping off a bandaid. He knew that once he was there, she wouldn’t let him leave until he was done.  Magnus was behind her desk when he got there, with Dr Watson, Will, Kate, Declan and a few other faces he couldn’t put to names clustered around her. He realized, when he got there, that he hadn’t planned any further than ‘go talk to Magnus’, so he stood just inside the door, rocking on the balls of his feet, until Magnus said ‘hello Topher, why don’t you come in.” 

When he didn’t, Declan eventually came over and shoved him gently inside. 

“Hello Topher,” said Magnus, “You can come in, we’re not doing much of anything constructive right now, we’re still waiting for Nikola and he’s late.  Again.”

“You said you were going to stop them, right?  The Dollhouse… and Rossum… and –“ He started, but he couldn’t quite manage to say Boyd’s name out loud.

“Yes Topher, we are.” Magnus answered neutrally.

“But I’m supposed to help.” Topher gasped, “Aren’t I?  Because I, you said I had to, to decide and I have to, to do, do something, and its my, its my mess and I, I should, I need to do, do, I have to do something, so I think, I think I should do, do something to help.” He finally managed, making slightly frantic piling up gestures with his hands at Kate, who nodded and smiled encouragingly.

Magnus smiled too, “Well, we would certainly appreciate the help, why don’t you come and sit down, have you met everyone?”

“Ah, no,” said Topher, folding himself into a chair.

“Well then, Will and Kate you know, and James, obviously,” she gestured to Dr. Watson, “I believe you’ve met Declan?”

Topher nodded.

“Ah, good, and this is John Druitt, and Nigel Griffin,” she said gesturing to opposite ends of her desk at the tall man standing across from Dr. Watson and the shorter one sitting next to him. “They’re colleagues of mine, among other things, and this, is Abbey Corrigan, our FBI liason.”

Topher took a full step back when Magnus said ‘FBI’, because he really, really didn’t want to be arrested. He probably deserved it, but he didn’t want to be.  Also because he was a little confused.  He still, fundamentally thought of FBI agents as ‘Paul Ballard’, despite Ballard not actually being FBI any more.  Abbey Corrigan was sort of the exact mathematical inverse of Paul Ballard, short and smiling, with a round face and full lips.  She’s also currently compounding the impression by being very pregnant, which Topher could see when she stepped out from behind the desk.  But he still took a second step back when she moved forward

She walked up to him and gave him a hug, pulling his head down onto his shoulder.  This was an awkward procedure, because she was short, and he was having to not only lean down but to lean over her belly.

“Its okay,” she said, patting him between the shoulder blades, “nothing to be afraid of. I’m not scary.”


End file.
